How Does Pleasantville Show The Ability To Change Throughout The Play

Change can impact not just the way others see you, but the way you see yourself

Good afternoon class,

Change is often said to be a welcomed part of one’s life. It has many effects on those who accept and respond to it and is often varied in form. Whether it be positive or negative, change alters the way one sees others and how they see themselves. The idea of change is portrayed through the drama Pygmalion through the analysis of social criticism and the relationship between people in different social classes. Similarly, the characters represented in Gary Ross’ Pleasantville also experience change as they develop and create a society that defies the one they had grown up in, and how people who had not experienced the change viewed them differently.
C: Ultimately, it's this potential to change and the acceptance of it within Pleasantville that becomes the overall theme for the characters within the text.

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T: However, it’s at the beginning of the transformation in Pygmalion where you see the difference in how people act and treat those who aren’t on par with their way of living but are yet to accept the change.

E: In Pygmalion, Eliza often struggles with changing her way of living and moving on to one that people expect of her, and is often ridiculed for that. In Act Two, when Eliza is confronted by the thought of washing, Mrs Pearce, the one looking after her, begins to grow agitated.

E: When Eliza complains that getting into the bath could kill her, Mrs Pearce tries to persuade her by saying: “I want to change you from a frowzy slut to a clean respectable lady fit to sit with the with the gentlemen in the study.”

E: This statement shows how Mrs Pearce viewed her on the outside before she was a lady, and Eliza is a perfect example of an undesirable in a place where she should be better than
E: In Act Five of Pygmalion, Eliza fights with Higgins over how he’s treated her and threatens to become an assistant of Nepommuck. It's this scene that she realised she had power over Higgins throughout the entire time they were together.

E: “What a fool I was not to think of it before!” Eliza exclaims. “Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names when all I had to do was lift a finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.”

E: In this scene, Eliza finally realised that she always had a power over both herself and Higgins, and it was significant because she knew that she didn’t need to change her voice to stand up for herself.

C: Eliza was able to grow as an individual and was able to use it so that she was able to tell Higgins how she really felt, and it’s the experience of change that was able to make her realise that she was her own person.

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T: Similarly, it's the end of a transformation that can impact a community and the way they treat the people inside their